Knife attacker in Finland targeted women: police

Police officers assist a person lying on the pavement in the Finnish city of Turku on Aug. 18, 2017.

KIRSI KANERVA/AFP/Getty Images

Tuomas Forsell and Lefteris Karagiannopoulos

TURKU, Finland

Reuters

August 19, 2017August 18, 2017

Finnish police said on Saturday that an 18-year-old Moroccan man, arrested after a knife rampage that killed two people and wounded eight, appeared to have targeted women and that the spree was being treated as the country's first terrorism-related attack.

The suspect arrested following the attack on Friday after being shot in the leg by police in the city of Turku had arrived in Finland last year, police said. They said they later arrested four other Moroccan men over possible links to him and had issued an international arrest warrant for a sixth Moroccan national.

Finnish broadcaster MTV, citing an unnamed source, said the main suspect had been denied asylum in Finland. The police said only that he had been "part of the asylum process."

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The case marks the first suspected terror attack in Finland, where violent crime is relatively rare.

"The suspect's profile is similar to that of several other recent radical Islamist terror attacks that have taken place in Europe," Director Antti Pelttari from the Finnish Security Intelligence Service told a news conference.

The police said they were investigating possible links to Thursday's deadly van attack in the Spanish city of Barcelona.

Both of those killed in the Turku attack, and six of the eight who were wounded, were women, the police said. The two who died were Finns, and an Italian and two Swedish citizens were among the injured.

"It seems that the suspect chose women as his targets, because the men who were wounded were injured when they tried to help, or prevent the attacks," said Crista Granroth from the National Bureau of Investigation.

"The act was cowardly ... we have been afraid of this and we have prepared for this. We are not an island anymore, the whole of Europe is affected," Prime Minister Juha Sipila said.

SCREAMING

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The stabbing spree occurred on Friday afternoon in the main market place in Turku, on the southwest coast of the country, 160 kilometers from Helsinki.

"First thing we heard was a young woman, screaming like crazy. I thought it's just kids having fun ... but then people started to move around and I saw a man with a knife in his hand, stabbing a woman," said Laura Laine, who was sitting in a cafe.

"Then a person ran towards us shouting 'He has a knife', and everybody from the terrace ran inside. Next, a woman came in to the cafe. She was crying hysterically, down on her knees, saying someone's neck has been slashed open."

Four of the wounded were still in hospital, three of them in intensive care, while the other injured persons would be sent home on Saturday, the hospital said.

Turku's Iraqi, Syrian and Islamic community condemned the attacks and organized a rally of solidarity in the city's main square, but decided to cancel it due to security concerns.

"Finns and immigrants, and people from different religions, have had very good relations in Turku... We are shocked, but I don't see this changing that," said Abdirahman Mohamed, Chairman of the Islamic community of Turku.

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He said the Moroccan suspects were not familiar to him or to the Islamic community in town, which has around 2,000 members.

TENSIONS

An Anti-immigration mood has been on the rise in Finland since it received some 32,500 asylum seekers during the migration crisis in 2015.

Tensions simmered on Saturday Turku as the anti-immigration "Finland First" movement held a rally but it was met by counter-demonstrators brandishing signs saying "No room for racism."

In Helsinki, about 200 people gathered in the rain to protest against the construction of a mosque and Muslim immigration to Finland in a rally planned by the Finnish far-right group the Finnish Defence League (FDL) before the attack.

Some members of the nationalist Finns party, which was kicked out of the government in June for their new hard-line anti-immigration leadership, blamed the government for what they said was too loose an immigration policy.

"The asylum system is the primary road for illegal immigration, used also by the terrorists. Harmful immigration can be controlled only by reducing Finland's attractiveness, or by border controls," said Finns party lawmaker Ville Tavio.

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